Doublecortin reinforces microtubules to promote growth cone advance in soft environments.

Doublecortin (DCX) is a microtubule (MT)-associated protein in immature neurons. DCX is essential for early brain development, and DCX mutations account for nearly a quarter of all cases of lissencephaly-spectrum brain malformations that arise from a neuronal migration failure through the developing cortex. By analyzing pathogenic DCX missense mutations in non-neuronal cells, we show that disruption of MT binding is central to DCX pathology.

From intra- to extra-uterine: early phase design of a transfer to extra-uterine life support through medical simulation.

Introduction: Extra-uterine life support technology could provide a more physiologic alternative for the treatment of extremely premature infants, as it allows further fetal growth and development ex utero. Animal studies have been carried out which involved placing fetuses in a liquid-filled incubator, with oxygen supplied through an oxygenator connected to the umbilical vessels. Hence, by delaying lung exposure to air, further lung development and maturation can take place.

IntAct: A nondisruptive internal tagging strategy to study the organization and function of actin isoforms.

Mammals have 6 highly conserved actin isoforms with nonredundant biological functions. The molecular basis of isoform specificity, however, remains elusive due to a lack of tools. Here, we describe the development of IntAct, an internal tagging strategy to study actin isoforms in fixed and living cells.

Doublecortin reinforces microtubules to promote growth cone advance in soft environments.

Doublecortin (DCX) is a microtubule-associated protein critical for brain development. Although most highly expressed in the developing central nervous system, the molecular function of DCX in neuron morphogenesis remains unknown and controversial. We demonstrate that DCX function is intimately linked to its microtubule-binding activity.

Transferring an extremely premature infant to an extra-uterine life support system: a prospective view on the obstetric procedure.

To improve care for extremely premature infants, the development of an extrauterine environment for newborn development is being researched, known as Artificial Placenta and Artificial Womb (APAW) technology. APAW facilitates extended development in a liquid-filled incubator with oxygen and nutrient supply through an oxygenator connected to the umbilical vessels. This setup is intended to provide the optimal environment for further development, allowing further lung maturation by delaying gas exposure to oxygen.

The mobilization and transport of newly fixed carbon are driven by plant water use in an experimental rainforest under drought.

Non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) are building blocks for biomass and fuel metabolic processes. However, it remains unclear how tropical forests mobilize, export, and transport NSCs to cope with extreme droughts. We combined drought manipulation and ecosystem 13CO2 pulse-labeling in an enclosed rainforest at Biosphere 2, assessed changes in NSCs, and traced newly assimilated carbohydrates in plant species with diverse hydraulic traits and canopy positions.

Network analysis of the social media activities around the #TeleCheckAF project.

Aims: TeleCheck-AF is a novel remote on-demand mobile health infrastructure around teleconsultations for patients with atrial fibrillation. Social media (SoMe) communication on Twitter contributed to the dissemination of this healthcare innovation by using the hashtag #TeleCheckAF. This study aims to analyse the SoMe network behind #TeleCheckAF and determine the key opinion leaders.

Clinical aspects of umbilical cord cannulation during transfer from the uterus to a liquid-based perinatal life support system for extremely premature infants a qualitative generic study.

A liquid-based perinatal life support system (PLS) for extremely premature infants (born before 28 week of gestational age) envisions a connection between the infant's native umbilical cord and an artificial placenta system through cannulation. This system mimics a natural mothers' womb to achieve better organ maturations. The objective of this study is to gain insight into the clinical focus points of umbilical cord cannulation and how cannulation should be addressed in extremely premature infants during the transfer from the uterus to an in-utero simulating liquid-based PLS system.

Simulation-based development: shaping clinical procedures for extra-uterine life support technology.

Background: Research into Artificial Placenta and Artificial Womb (APAW) technology for extremely premature infants (born < 28 weeks of gestation) is currently being conducted in animal studies and shows promising results. Because of the unprecedented nature of a potential treatment and the high-risk and low incidence of occurrence, translation to the human condition is a complex task. Consequently, the obstetric procedure, the act of transferring the infant from the pregnant woman to the APAW system, has not yet been established for human patients.

Lexical Processing Strongly Affects Reading Times But Not Skipping During Natural Reading.

In a typical text, readers look much longer at some words than at others, even skipping many altogether. Historically, researchers explained this variation via low-level visual or oculomotor factors, but today it is primarily explained via factors determining a word's lexical processing ease, such as how well word identity can be predicted from context or discerned from parafoveal preview. While the existence of these effects is well established in controlled experiments, the relative importance of prediction, preview and low-level factors in natural reading remains unclear.

Effects of drought and recovery on soil volatile organic compound fluxes in an experimental rainforest.

Drought can affect the capacity of soils to emit and consume biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Here we show the impact of prolonged drought followed by rewetting and recovery on soil VOC fluxes in an experimental rainforest. Under wet conditions the rainforest soil acts as a net VOC sink, in particular for isoprenoids, carbonyls and alcohols.

Leaf-level metabolic changes in response to drought affect daytime CO2 emission and isoprenoid synthesis pathways.

In the near future, climate change will cause enhanced frequency and/or severity of droughts in terrestrial ecosystems, including tropical forests. Drought responses by tropical trees may affect their carbon use, including production of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), with implications for carbon cycling and atmospheric chemistry that are challenging to predict. It remains unclear how metabolic adjustments by mature tropical trees in response to drought will affect their carbon fluxes associated with daytime CO2 production and VOC emission.

Deep roots mitigate drought impacts on tropical trees despite limited quantitative contribution to transpiration.

Deep rooting is considered a central drought-mitigation trait with vast impact on ecosystem water cycling. Despite its importance, little is known about the overall quantitative water use via deep roots and dynamic shifts of water uptake depths with changing ambient conditions. Knowledge is especially sparse for tropical trees.

Growth cone advance requires EB1 as revealed by genomic replacement with a light-sensitive variant.

A challenge in analyzing dynamic intracellular cell biological processes is the dearth of methodologies that are sufficiently fast and specific to perturb intracellular protein activities. We previously developed a light-sensitive variant of the microtubule plus end-tracking protein EB1 by inserting a blue light-controlled protein dimerization module between functional domains. Here, we describe an advanced method to replace endogenous EB1 with this light-sensitive variant in a single genome editing step, thereby enabling this approach in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and hiPSC-derived neurons.

Tracing plant source water dynamics during drought by continuous transpiration measurements: An in-situ stable isotope approach.

The isotopic composition of xylem water (δ ) is of considerable interest for plant source water studies. In-situ monitored isotopic composition of transpired water (δ ) could provide a nondestructive proxy for δ -values. Using flow-through leaf chambers, we monitored 2-hourly δ -dynamics in two tropical plant species, one canopy-forming tree and one understory herbaceous species.

Chiral monoterpenes reveal forest emission mechanisms and drought responses.

Monoterpenes (CH) are emitted in large quantities by vegetation to the atmosphere (>100 TgC year), where they readily react with hydroxyl radicals and ozone to form new particles and, hence, clouds, affecting the Earth's radiative budget and, thereby, climate change. Although most monoterpenes exist in two chiral mirror-image forms termed enantiomers, these (+) and (-) forms are rarely distinguished in measurement or modelling studies. Therefore, the individual formation pathways of monoterpene enantiomers in plants and their ecological functions are poorly understood.

Controlling Cell Shape and Microtubule Organization by Extracellular Matrix Micropatterning.

Micropatterning of extracellular matrix proteins enables defining cell position and shape in experiments investigating intracellular dynamics and organization. While such standardization is advantageous in automated and quantitative analysis of many cells, the original methods generating such patterns are cumbersome and inflexible. However, recent development of contact-less methods that allow photochemical generation of protein patterns robustly and rapidly is boosting the broader availability of micropatterning approaches.

The E3 ligase TRIM1 ubiquitinates LRRK2 and controls its localization, degradation, and toxicity.

Missense mutations in leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) are the most common cause of familial Parkinson's disease (PD); however, pathways regulating LRRK2 subcellular localization, function, and turnover are not fully defined. We performed quantitative mass spectrometry-based interactome studies to identify 48 novel LRRK2 interactors, including the microtubule-associated E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM1 (tripartite motif family 1). TRIM1 recruits LRRK2 to the microtubule cytoskeleton for ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation by binding LRRK2911-919, a nine amino acid segment within a flexible interdomain region (LRRK2853-981), which we designate the "regulatory loop" (RL).

Optogenetic EB1 inactivation shortens metaphase spindles by disrupting cortical force-producing interactions with astral microtubules.

Chromosome segregation is accomplished by the mitotic spindle, a bipolar micromachine built primarily from microtubules. Different microtubule populations contribute to spindle function: kinetochore microtubules attach and transmit forces to chromosomes, antiparallel interpolar microtubules support spindle structure, and astral microtubules connect spindle poles to the cell cortex. In mammalian cells, end-binding (EB) proteins associate with all growing microtubule plus ends throughout the cell cycle and serve as adaptors for diverse +TIPs that control microtubule dynamics and interactions with other intracellular structures.

Ecosystem fluxes during drought and recovery in an experimental forest.

Severe droughts endanger ecosystem functioning worldwide. We investigated how drought affects carbon and water fluxes as well as soil-plant-atmosphere interactions by tracing CO and deep water HO label pulses and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in an enclosed experimental rainforest. Ecosystem dynamics were driven by different plant functional group responses to drought.

Microbial Communities and Interactions of Nitrogen Oxides With Methanogenesis in Diverse Peatlands of the Amazon Basin.

Tropical peatlands are hotspots of methane (CH) production but present high variation and emission uncertainties in the Amazon region. This is because the controlling factors of methane production in tropical peats are not yet well documented. Although inhibitory effects of nitrogen oxides (NO ) on methanogenic activity are known from pure culture studies, the role of NO in the methane cycling of peatlands remains unexplored.

Search Engine Gender Bias.

This article discusses possible search engine page rank biases as a consequence of search engine profile information. After describing search engine biases, their causes, and their ethical implications, we present data about the Google search engine (GSE) and DuckDuckGo (DDG) for which only the first uses profile data for the production of page ranks. We analyze 408 search engine screen prints of 102 volunteers (53 male and 49 female) on queries for job search and political participation.

Rainforest-to-pasture conversion stimulates soil methanogenesis across the Brazilian Amazon.

The Amazon rainforest is a biodiversity hotspot and large terrestrial carbon sink threatened by agricultural conversion. Rainforest-to-pasture conversion stimulates the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The biotic methane cycle is driven by microorganisms; therefore, this study focused on active methane-cycling microorganisms and their functions across land-use types.

Empirical evidence for resilience of tropical forest photosynthesis in a warmer world.

Tropical forests may be vulnerable to climate change if photosynthetic carbon uptake currently operates near a high temperature limit. Predicting tropical forest function requires understanding the relative contributions of two mechanisms of high-temperature photosynthetic declines: stomatal limitation (H1), an indirect response due to temperature-associated changes in atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD), and biochemical restrictions (H2), a direct temperature response. Their relative control predicts different outcomes-H1 is expected to diminish with stomatal responses to future co-occurring elevated atmospheric [CO], whereas H2 portends declining photosynthesis with increasing temperatures.